Where are you heading?
This week, it was time to take a serious look at what we had planned for the future after finishing our course; coming up with a professional plan and doing some research on it; and how you would implement future protection into your life as we all know from last year, life isn't predictable.
For me, my professional plan is that I'll start out small; taking a gap year to build up a portfolio and doing some volunteer jobs to build up my CV. But after that, I'll take a master degree course for either character designing or storyboarding to not only build up my degrees for a more impressive CV; but also to be sure that I would have a better chance of getting a job position I would prefer. It'll also give me more of a chance to work and improve on my skills for direct things in a project as opposed to juggling four different projects which is what i've been doing for the past five years.
But, I do need to acknowledge the cons that come with getting a master's degree; such as the cost as you'll need to pay for it; a master's is shorter than a normal degree which means there is more work squished into less time; and how it can sometimes make you as a student feel lonely. For me to combat these, I'll look for advice from my family who can help me deal with finances, as well as to remember to not feel too overwhelmed and take breaks so I don't get burnt out which is a risk from a large courseworks; and being lonely just sadly has come naturally so that isn't a worry for me.
But for a backup plan, I'll work as a freelance artist as I plan on doing something similar during my gap year for practice; doing online commissions, working with my aunt for a small business of custom t-shirt, creating animatics to upload them on youtube or working on my own freelance projects.
Professional Plan
Since I'm going to get a master's degree, I'll more than likely need to do some studies during my gap year as I shouldn't waste the tutor's time during my time studying at the master course on the basics and so they can focus more on teaching us the advance stuff. Luckily, thanks to the internet, there are plenty of tutorials for either character designing and storyboarding basics. Youtube has lots of videos from various different people that have videos talking about various tips and tricks on how to improve on the basics; and with the large variety of artists sharing these tips, I can easily find one that's easy for me to understand and get great advice from. I could also use the website SkillShare as it features more professional tutors as some of them have come straight from the industry, but due to the fact that it is a subscription paid website, I would need to pay for full access to all of the tutorials, something that with me needing to save money for the future degree, I would have to stick to YouTube video tutorials.
Future Protection
But with the unpredictability of life, I should try and focus too much on this plan as it can always change due to either not getting put on a course, lockdown returning or just not having enough to pay for the course itself. So, I should think of an alternative route to take my future; as well as to put a secondary job idea in mind in case getting into the animation industry is too difficult for me.
Naturally for me, I would probably just use my freelance career plan as I can see a variety of different directions I could take it and allow me to have more control over it with my own timetable so I can prevent myself from heavy amounts of burnouts; and I don't have too much to worry about finances as due to my disability, my family gets money from the government to help provide for me and they aren't pressuring me to move out so I don't have to worry about finances for a living space while still doing my volunteering
But if I do want to make any amount of money for myself and commission work isn't coming in, I'll try and get a small part time job working at a media shop like HMV or GAME as I can work in a environment surrounded by media I'm knowledgeable on which I can use to help customers. But that idea is mostly a last resort if everything else crumbles down.
And for keeping professional relationships, I'm known for being a nice and friendly person who doesn't like conflict so I won't intentionally do anything to create drama in the workplace. But saying that, being on the spectrum, I could always accidentally butt heads with a co-worker if I get a bit emotional so that will be something I'll have to keep an eye on; but to help, I would also try and stay away from people that would look down on me for my disability as there are people in the entertainment industry who do proudly express their disregard for people on the autistic spectrum and I won't tolerate it, just giving them the cold shoulder.